I’ve already been paying for YouTube Premium for many years to get rid of advertisement, and I’ve been using SponsorBlock for a year or so on my laptop to skip the inline ads, but because most of my watching of YouTube happens on the TV I always had to use the remote to skip it. It helps to see the “most rewind” area so you can fast forward to it, but it’s still very cumbersome.
Now a couple of days someone mentioned SmartTube on Lemmy and I installed it on my Chromecast with Google TV OS and oh boy is this software great! I did it to get SponsorBlock, but that is by far not the only feature I love about it.
- flexible time hiding the UI of a video (have it to 1 sec now)
- not showing UI when pausing
- way faster scrolling
- instant loading
- way faster account switching
- instant voice search
But there is one feature missing, changing the search language. We speak combined 7 languages at home and it’s impossible to search anything other than in English which is really annoying.
Anyway, check it out if you can on your TV.
I also installed https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=flar2.homebutton to be able to remap the YouTube button on the Chromecast remote to SmartTube.
I guess it’s time to get the SmartTube icon on the remote too 😂
Has Remapper been updated to fix the volume control glitch? Last time I used Remapper the volume would be uncontrollable. Without it, pressing the volume up key would only go up 2-3 units on my tv. If I used the volume up button with Remapper running it would scroll all the way up to max volume with a single press…
Volume control seems to work fine for me.
Cool. It’s been about a year since I tried it so I’ll have another whack at it tomorrow. That will be so awesome. My Chromecast will be complete. Smart tube on one button and either Stremio or HDOBox on the other…
Just tested it out and still get the runaway volume. Did some testing and it seems to happen with some other services activated so a Chromecast problem not a Remapper problem… I’ll play again tomorrow…
Never heard of HDO Box. Is it good? Do I need a debrid subscription in order to use it?
No Debrid required. Recommend VPN obviously.
Put it this way: I put it on my 70yo mother’s tab for her when I cancelled the family Netflix plan…
Have a look at it. You can link in your Trakt account And they have a Discord and a Telegram for keeping an eye on updates. Can currently sideload on to iPhone and hoping to make it available on Apple appstore in the future. Available on Android obviously. No PC port unless you want to mess with an Android emulator…
https://hdo.app
Also, resolved my volume problem. Had the Chromecast set to CEC mode instead of device volume.
Legend!
This is awesome, thanks!
Thank you very much for this, finally managed to disable and rebind some remote buttons for apps that Ive already nuked off the TV. Works great with some workarounds.
Awesome! I’ma try this!
I… didn’t know I needed this. Remapped the YT and Netflix buttons, with single and double taps. The remote is now exactly the remote I need for my Chromecast.
Oh good poind with the doubble taps!